


nobody broke your heart

by girljustdied



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-26
Updated: 2011-06-26
Packaged: 2019-10-08 03:19:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17378597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/pseuds/girljustdied
Summary: start anew (go back).





	nobody broke your heart

**Author's Note:**

> post 1x12.  
> prompt was "don't let them see you cry."

Not a single person at school will look Karen in the eye—not even the teachers. If Lip were around, she’d lean into him and snark about how she’d thought she already _was_ the school slut. Apparently not quite. Just needed to release a sex video with his viciously alcoholic father to seal the deal completely. Go from having boys flock to her to finding used condoms shoved halfway through the grates of her locker. Simple. Easy.

That’s where the whole thing falls apart, though. It’s not simple, it’s not easy, and she can’t rely on Lip to reply with a slightly buzzed diatribe that includes a startling number of statistics she knows if she double-checked on the Internet would be completely spot-on.

Thing is, Lip’s her best friend.

Worst thing is, she knows he gets it—no matter how hurt he somehow is. Doesn’t hold it against her.

Total destruction. That’s what she was looking for. Complete demolition of who she’d struggled to be just to try and feel a real connection, rip up the foundations and build again.

Lindsay Walker spits at her in the hallway before their lunch period. It’s not exactly a clean slate. Karen feels her hands trembling and her eyes stinging and she thinks about appearances, about what people will see when they look at her that has nothing to do with the hair and the nose ring and the combat boots. She’d dressed for battle, sure, just not the one she’s stuck with now.

“Whore” scrawled across the back windshield of her new car with red spray paint, she mutters angrily aloud in the parking lot at nobody and everybody about double standards. Labels. Bullshit like that. Not very coherently. That’s Lip’s thing.

He helps her get it off the glass, though. Mixes together a bunch of stuff that’d probably kill them if they breathed it in too deep. He’s quiet. He was quiet before, sometimes. That’s what she keeps reminding herself. He could be gone for days before, too, so. Really, things are back to normal. Almost.

But he doesn’t put his arm around her as they walk side by side through the hallways. And they haven’t fucked since that last time in her basement.

All that time she’d figured he probably didn’t—that she didn’t—

Feels stupid now.

“I do, too,” she tells him, smoke heavy and pungent all trapped up in the van in his backyard. Love him. Feel connected to him. It’s out of left field, but she can tell he’s followed her train of thought. “You know. I think I do.”

He exhales and closes his eyes briefly. Passes his joint back to her before he yanks open the door and slides out. “See you later.”

He will. She’s been staying at their place more and more—Frank’s still shacked up with her mom and she has no clue how to deal with the consequences of her own decisions.

Usually she finds Lip sleeping head to foot with Ian, but tonight he’s slumped down over his desk, breathing deep and even.

“Come on,” she wraps her arms around his middle and tugs gently. “Up you go.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Carl rasps angrily as she helps a barely-conscious Lip up the ladder to his bed and starts to follow him. It’s like a jolt through her spine. “Don’t fuck with Lip, slut.”

Shame. That’s what she feels. All the screwing around, all the drugs, all the times people had made it clear that she _should_ feel like the dirt under their shoes, and she hadn’t. Not even. But now her chest is tight, her skin’s hot.

Lip’s looking at her, eyes sharper now. Doesn’t break away from her gaze when he says, “Shut up, Carl.”

Karen takes off, barely able to get out a shaky “good night.” Sleeps in her own room—not the basement, not the Gallagher’s—for the first time in weeks. Locks the door. Can’t be too careful with Frank. Skips school the next morning, and is honestly surprised to hear the sound of rocks against her window by lunchtime.

“What’re you doing?” she calls down at Lip.

“I don’t know!” he yells back up, cigarette hanging from the corner of his chapped lips.

She lets him in through the front door, and they barely get through exchanging pleasantries with her mom and getting up the stairs before springing at one another. It’s not gentle and slow—her nose ring almost gets ripped out twice until she grinds up against him and cranes her head as far back into the mattress as she can to yank it out herself.

It’s over fast, him holding out just long enough to get her off before biting her shoulder and coming inside of her with a muffled cry.

“Why’d you stay home? Scared they’d find a new way to torture you?” He leans precariously off the bed to dig through the pockets of his jeans on the floor until he finds a half-smoked cigarette. Lies back down next to her and lights up. “Maybe pig’s blood, Carrie-style.”

She can feel it building inside of her—this weird, after-sex, desperately sad feeling. Her voice shakes and she digs the heels of her hands against her eyelids. “Look, I knew if I saw you in the hallway or something I might just start crying. And I didn’t wanna take the chance, I guess.”

“Never let ‘em see you sweat, huh?” his voice is quiet and raspy.

“Something like that.” She reaches for his cigarette, but he doesn’t give it over. With one leg slung between his, hovering over him and trying to reach his outstretched hand, she wipes a stray tear from her cheek and continues, “Hey. Fuck you.”

He looks momentarily stunned by how romantic the words actually sound, how adoring, before he smiles. Leans up to kiss her tenderly. Cups her jaw with the cigarette still dangling between his fingers and swipes the hole in her nose with the thumb of his other hand—comes away with the slightest trace of blood on it.

“Well, fuck you, too.”


End file.
